Profiles In Cowardice

Not long ago, there was a head-exploding alliance between Senators Sherrod Brown and David Vitter around the notion that federal regulators should get tough with the "too big to fail" banks so as to make it a little harder for them to eat the world next time. Hurrah, said their fellow senators. Then they produced the bill and, suddenly, Brown and Vitter looked behind them and saw the gently waving grass of empty fields extending all the way to the far horizon.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), whose Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations recently released a scathing report on JPMorgan's "London Whale" trading losses, said that, although he supports raising capital standards for big banks, there are parts of the bill that he and his staff find potentially problematic. As of Friday, the bill has just two co-sponsors: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who was an initial co-sponsor, took his name off the bill last month, citing a "miscommunication." And Sessions told POLITICO that he is still deciding whether to remain a co-sponsor because "it's a complex area and you need to be careful that you first do no harm."

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That's some fine weaselspeak right there, especially from Kirk. What could the "miscommunication" possibly have been? Did he think they were talking about flood control? Farm supports? Was he trying to pay his phone bill on his iPhone and accidentally hit his "co-sponsor" app?

But even as the banking industry has publicly dismissed the Brown-Vitter bill as having no legislative future, lobbyists in Washington were concerned enough to quickly get on the offensive and try to kill the proposal before it could gain any steam. "It's not a serious proposal. It's intended to attack the banks," said Tony Fratto, a former White House and Treasury official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies. "If you support Brown-Vitter, then your view is that there is no net benefit to having large, globally active American banks." The bill's prospects, or at least the policies behind it, could change dramatically if another banking scandal erupts. And if it does, the senators have positioned themselves to pounce on the opportunity. "It's something that Brown and Vitter are going to keep out there and keep alive and keep talking about," said an industry executive following the debate. "It's one of those things where they're treading water with it until ... the next big bank scandal - the next 'Whale.'"

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And everybody involved in this debate -- Brown, Vitter, the various legislative weasels, the bankers, Fratto, all of them -- knows there will be another "banking crisis," that there are more whales out there in the sea, and all of them know who will take it in the neck when the inevitable happens. They all know it. And they...don't...care. Why should they? Who went to jail last time? Who paid a real price? This bill will die a quiet death, and very soon, and nothing will change and it will happen again and people will wonder how in the hell it all happened. Look forward, not back.